Cognitive Biases in the context of Enterprise Java vs. Ruby

There was an interesting talk from Paolo Perotta posted on InfoQ yesterday - Don't Trust Your Brain". He comes from the Java Enterprise world, is now a "Rubyist", and is currently learning Clojure ("a humbling experience", he says). On the surface, the talk is about the challenges in learning a new programming language, but there are more general points on the cultural thinking attached to both Enterprise Java and Ruby, and how unconscious mental blocks prevent you from using objects at hand in the new ways that may be required to solve a problem (he refers to it as "functional fixedness").

I think that it highlights the benefits of working through the discomfort and potential disorientation of learning new programming languages, with one of the goals being to reveal and then be able to overcome cognitive biases you didn't even know you had: learning the language is of course not a simple matter of syntax.

The purpose of this page is to summarize in one place some of the interactive visualizations I have worked on. Most of these were built...

"When you start on your journey to Ithaca, then pray that the road is long, full of adventure, full of knowledge... Always keep Ithaca fixed in your mind. To arrive there is your ultimate goal. But do not hurry the voyage at all." (from "Ithaca", by C. P. Cavafy)